BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN ON 3/22/23 AT 9:04 AM
EDT
Ukrainian police officers inspect a downed Russian drone in the area of a research institute, part of Ukraine's National Academy of Science, after a strike, in northwestern Kyiv, on March 22, 2022.FADEL SENNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Ukraine said it downed a barrage of Iranian-made drones after
Russia launched an overnight assault across several regions, including the
capital Kyiv.
The General Staff of the
Armed Forces of Ukraine said in its daily update on the conflict that Ukraine's armed forces had
destroyed 16 out of 21 Shahed-136 drones launched by Russia overnight.
Russia has been
launching the Iranian Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as
kamikaze drones, throughout President Vladimir Putin's
full-scale invasion of Ukraine, particularly against civilian and energy infrastructure. Iran has
denied supplying the weapons to Russia since the invasion, though it has said
some were sent before that.
"On the night of March 22, the enemy
launched another massive attack using Shahed-136 UAVs. According to preliminary
information, Ukrainian defenders shot down 16 out of 21 enemy drones," the
general staff's update said, noting that the threat of further strikes
throughout the country remains high.
The Ukrainian Air Force said the Shahed-136
drones were launched from Russia's Bryansk region, located near the Ukraine
border.
An air alert was announced overnight in multiple
regions across Ukraine, including Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr,
Sumy, Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, Dnipro, Ternopil, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and
Kropyvnytskyi.
Enemy's strike on Zaporizhia today.#russiaisaterroriststate
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) March 22, 2023
📷 @ZelenskyyUA pic.twitter.com/RtmFi4MBJn
Drones struck a dorm and college in the Kyiv region, killing at
least four people. Andrei Nebytov, the Kyiv region's police chief, said the
fourth victim of the strike was a 40-year-old man who had worked as a driver.
"The man did not go down to the shelter during the air
raid," Nebytov said on his Telegram channel.
The Kyiv city military administration said Ukraine shot down
eight drones around the region, while in the Zhytomyr region, three drones were
shot down.
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky said
on Twitter on Wednesday that "over 20 Iranian murderous
drones" had been launched by Russia against Ukraine overnight. "Every
time someone tries to hear the word 'peace' in Moscow, another order is given
there for such criminal strikes," he tweeted.
British defense officials
assessed in February that Russia's supply of Shahed-136 drones may have dried up.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense said in a daily update on the
conflict on February 25 that there had been no reports of Iranian attack drones
being used in Ukraine for some 10 days, and that Ukrainian armed forces had
previously reported shooting down at least 24 Shahed-136s between late January
and early February.
The lack of deployment of the drones likely showed that Russia
had "run down its current stock" and would seek a
"resupply," the ministry said.
According to RUSI, a British
think tank, the drones have been deployed from Belarus and Crimea, and their
range allows them to hit nearly any point in Ukraine. Zelensky said in a
December 21 speech to the U.S. Congress that the weapons have become "a threat to
our critical infrastructure."
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-downs-barrage-shahed-136-drones-assault-1789505
No comments:
Post a Comment